The Importance of the Fiction Book Blurb in Marketing Your Novel

The fiction book blurb plays a few important roles. Not only is it meant to give an enticing glimpse inside the pages of your novel but it is also very important in helping a reader decide whether they buy your book or not.

Just to be clear the fiction book blurb is also known as the book description or the backcover jacket description.

Writing a book is a huge achievement. So first off, congratulations. Unfortunately, it is only the first part of having people read your novel. Because once you publish it and put it out there for the world to read, you now need a way for people to find your novel and once they do, you need to entice them to want to read it.

So what makes writing the catchy fiction book blurb so important?

The fiction book blurb is key to helping the reader make that ultimate decision, to buy your book… or not.

Not only will you use the fiction book description on the back of your paperback book but also inside the ebook, on all the book seller sites online, your website, and any other place that you plan on marketing your novel.

The fiction book blurb really has three key purposes.

To entice the reader.

What’s inside the book? Your hard work, right? So, it’s important to have a way to tell the reader how good your story is and what it’s about. The fiction book blurb is one of the first points of contact (well often after the cover).

Imagine this, a person sees your book in a story or on the internet. The first thing they will do is read the blurb. They want to know what your story is about. So now that they’ve read it, they have a decision to make, do they want to read it or not? If the book description is well written, odds are they will buy your book with the intent of reading it. If it doesn’t grab their attention then they’ll move on to the next enticing book in your genre. If your book description isn’t compelling, often your book will be left on the shelf.

You don’t want that to happen.

Determine who your reader is.

You’ve spent a lot of time writing your story but now the big question is, who will read it?

Writing the fiction book blurb is really the first step as an author where you get to pull back from the story, the characters, and the setting, and look at it with fresh eyes. It is your opportunity to pull away from all that you’ve written and tell a new story. The catch is that the book description needs to convey the essence of the story and be interesting and compelling. You have to remember that your reader isn’t in your head so doesn’t know all that you know about your story. It is imperative that you take the time to figure out what will grab the reader’s attention.

As you are doing this though, this is a great opportunity, not only to write the compelling fiction book blurb, but to get clear on who your reader is. As you’re writing and pulling information for your book description, you can be looking at what type of person would be interested in what you’ve written. Who is this person? What are their interests? What would compel them to want to read your story? It’s important to know who your reader is. This is key to helping you with how to market your novel. When you know who might be interested in reading your book, not only will it give you ideas of what to use to entice the reader but also where you might find them on the internet.

To get noticed!

You need to grab your reader’s attention and quickly. With the number of books out there and approximately a 1,000,000 being published every year, (that works out to about 2700 books a day) you need to have something compelling and interesting and something that stands out. The purpose of the fiction book blurb is to grab the reader in such a way that they want to read your novel, which also means they buy it. So you need to make sure that your fiction book description is written in such a way that it will get noticed.

Writing the fiction book blurb is one of those things that should be easy, after all it’s only 200 words, but often it isn’t. It’s an important part of writing a novel but many authors dread it and often leave it until the very last minute to write. But it really does play a vital role in marketing your novel.

So that short 200 word fiction book blurb that you dread writing, really is almost more important than writing your novel. The fiction book blurb definitely deserves your time and attention. Make yours compelling and interesting and you will entice the reader.

Glenna Mageau is an award-winning suspense/thriller author, speaker and writing coach. She works with individuals to overcome the hurdles holding them back, to writing and publishing a novel. She also works with Indie/Self Published authors to create attention grabbing fiction book blurbs. Glenna offers writing workshops and is the creator of Mastering the Art of Writing the Catchy Fiction Book Blurb (for Indie/Self Published Authors). To learn more about writing fiction book blurbs, get your free copy of 10 Question Cheat Sheet to Write a Compelling Fiction Book Blurb. Learn more here: www.glennamageau.com Her motto: Escape to read… Read to escape… and Write for the Freedom!

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1 Comment

The fiction book blurb is so important but I know something that stresses many authors responsible for writing their own. It’s one thing to write it and another to make it interesting, compelling and tell what the story is about without giving too much away. Thank you for the opportunity to share with your readers.

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